Category: Zen-Cart

This is my latest add on from Zencart. This addon for Zencart allows a store owner to add a twitter has tag on the coupon admin page. Customers will need to register their twitter usernames with you store. Once this is all setup a user can tweet the Twitter hash tag, and they will be emailed the actual coupon code/offer. The Twitter hash tag can anything you set, but you would like would want something unique to your store.

This still allows all the same feature and benefits of standard coupons in Zencart. You can still set the minimum order, expiration date, and number of redemptions. Anytime a user has been emailed the coupon for the Twitter hash tag, Zencart will log it, so a user will only get emailed once. This also allows for the possibility to see who has tweeted which hashtags, and when.

This module will help the relevancy of the products returned on your zencart advanced search results. The stock search runs a LIKE query for each word in the query. There is no regard to the relevancy of the word for the product associated with it. When a user searches using a adjective like a color red, any product with “red” will be returned. Now make the search “red shoes”, and you will receive any product with red or shoes. You may get red shirts, black shoes, white shoes, or any other variation. As long as one of the words is in the name, model, description, or keywords it will be shown. Obvisously red shirts and white shoes are nothing like the users original query. This zencart advanced search module uses a natural language search function in MySQL which will return more accurate results for multi keyword search phrases. Each keyword searched, is scored for its relevancy for each product, and the results are ordered by this relevancy score. It will also try to pluralize words to expand the search. The module will create a configuration group in your admin panel for setting the weights for the product columns that are searched. The default values seem to be returning accurate results.

Only one original file is overwritten in /includes/modules/pages/advanced_search_result/header_php.php. Only a few lines where changed to modify the query being ran for the results. Installation is simple as uploading the zip file to your zencart installation. Login to your admin panel, and you will be prompted with a link to install the module. The installation link will install the proper database queries, and take you to the configuration page under Admin->Configuration->Reloaded Search.

An additional feature, is when only one product is returned in the search results, the product is displayed rather than the search result page.

This is another shipping module for Zencart. I have been working on the UPS XML module for awhile now. I have ported over the more advanced packing algorithm from the UPS module, to allow packing support in the USPS shipping module. This module allows Zencart to calculate shipping for multiple boxes for a freight quote. The default behavior for Zencart is to place all items in one box with a total weight to send for quote. With this updated USPS shipping module, items will be packed into boxes you enter, or you may set items to always be packaged separately. The module then returns the aggregate shipping cost for your packages. This should provide much more accurate shipping quotes. Continue reading Zencart + USPS Webtools with Multiple Package Support

Many websites offer free shipping in the USA. The default shipping module for zencart does not allow a store owner to easily handle it. In the configuration of the shipping module, you set the desired country (USA) to display free shipping to, and any of the other options that are available in the standard freeshipper module included with zencart. The zip file contains just 2 files, the shipping total, and a english language define. Install instructions are included in the download. Very easy and fast to install.

You may download the module form bitbucket.org, or even help contribute to it.

Here is another update to the popular add-on for Zencart called Easy Populate. For those unfamiliar with Easy Populate, it’s a fantastic add-on for Zencart. Easy Populate allows user to create comma separated values (.csv) files to editing the list of products in their Zencart installation. A user recently emailed me requesting an additional feature of price break imports to be included in Easy Populate. Continue reading Zencart + Price Breaks + Easy Populate

Lately, I have been developing a few modifications for Zencart. One of things I have noticed during the development process, is my shopping cart being lost while typing code and then refreshing the page a little while later. This was no big deal. Just go in add another product, and test again. Then, I got to talking to a few other users who seem to experience the same problem of losing their session. As an end user or a customer this can be frustrating that you have added items to your cart, and then something come ups. They come back to their cart, go to another page, and they have lost their shopping cart. Zencart checks your php.ini for session length. On some hosting accounts, you don’t have access to change this value, or you just want a more user friendly way to adjust this. This contribution / modification for Zen-cart will fix this problem. No core files are touched with this mod. You can extend the session length / timeout / expiration from the admin page.

One of the few options to try and combat SPAM on your zencart install, is to try and implement a CAPTCHA text/image on your contact us page. I recently updated a contribution I created several months ago. This reCAPTCHA contribution will add configuration fields to the database for your api key and password, color theme selection, and enable/disable feature on contact us form. The original contribution had used native mysql queries, so I have updated the contribution to support zencart’s $db:Factory object. Continue reading Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod

One task I have put off from switching from osCommerce to ZenCart shopping cart platform, was updating the UPS XML contribution. For those familiar with the shopping cart system, you know by default they only support standard UPS shipping. The cart figures shipping all the items together in one box. However, some products can’t be shipped together, and distorts shipping quotes for UPS. The solution that evolved in osCommerce was using UPS shipping API to get detailed freight quotes.Continue reading Zencart + UPS XML Dimensional Support

Zen-CartZen-cart is an excellent open source ecommerce shopping cart system. One of the features I like about Zen-cart is that once you understand the templating structure, writing plugins becomes pretty easy.

One of the features I enjoyed using with osCommerce, was a plugin for creating a related products box below a displayed. The plugin was easily implemented, and used an extra field add to the database. That was a great asset, that I felt missed using. Zen-cart offers something very similar in its port of XSell (Cross Sell). This feature would work fine if you are adding a few products at time, and do not have many related products. However, in my case, I have about 4,000 items in my catalog. The products are mostly lighting fixtures, which for must companies have coordinating fixtures for each room. This would be a bit cumbersome to create all of the related items. This is why I decided to write a quick plugin to get this simple functionality back. Continue reading Zencart Related Products

I recently was switching a online store from using osCommerce to Zen-Cart, and realized how nice it is to have the Easy Populate add-on. For those not familiar with the Easy Populate add-on, this allows you to download the product data from your online store into a CSV file. You can open the file in Excel or OpenOffice Calc, edit the spreadsheet (ie. products, quantities, and other attributes), and the re-upload the file. Easy Populate will update your online inventory with the data in the spreadsheet. The one caveat with Easy Populate has been adding custom fields to the export/import data. This has been discussed in the Zen-Cart Forum, but I wanted a better solution than always having to edit the code.